Town Crier: A happy summer with just us girls

Why can’t I get that old soap intro out of my head? Maybe it’s because my daughter is packing, as we speak, to go back

The new Full Plate grocery section

to college in Georgia. Soon I’ll be left with just memories of our summer adventures.

We did some wacky things in those three short months. We made Greek salad together and boldly substituted blue cheese for feta. We bought matching pink work out shorts and wore them to Pilates. And we watched every episode of “CSI: Miami.” We even have Horatio Caine as our cell phone wallpaper.

OK, that last part may be an “over-share” (A term we discovered this summer and have overused ever since).

Recently, we spent the day at the Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk, an outing we’ve shared since kindergarten. My little girl is 19 now, but we still giggle on the Haunted Castle ghost buster ride and get seasick on the Pirate Ship. We still share a Dippin’ Dots and stick our toes in the surf. And we never give up trying to toss the brass ring in the clown’s mouth on the Louff Carousel.

I guess you could say that life is a carousel, with lots of little ups and downs.

Watching my daughter pack for college, I can’t help it feel a little down.

Foodie alert: Add The Full Plate to the growing list of organic food outlets in Oakland. Owner Lisa Alumkal has expanded her ready to cook and cooked meals

business to include organic produce, Cowgirl Creamery Cheese and Marin Sun Farms meat. This should give a nice boost to her business, which has been operating next to Italian Colors for two and a half years.Dirty Dumping: It seems some people have forgotten the basic rules of society, like proper trash disposal. There have been several complaints, lately, about dirty dumpers who leave construction materials and garden debris along residential streets. If you see an illegal dumper or dump site, contact the Department of Public Works at pwacallcenter@oaklandnet.com. To avoid having your own debris dumped illegally, make sure you ask your handymen for a receipt from the city dump before you pay them.

E-mail Bag: Think your things are safe in a safe? Think again. A hills reader says her whole safety deposit box was stolen from an Oakland bank, recently. “I went to open it in April, and my key along with the bank key did not open the door to the box,” she writes, adding that when the bank finally drilled through the lock, the safety deposit box was missing. Because she didn’t have an inventory of the contents, it’s been difficult trying to get any satisfaction from the bank. The lesson? If you use a bank’s safety deposit box, make sure you have everything documented.